Three New York police officers are being praised for their compassion after purchasing food for a woman who was accused of shoplifting from a grocery store.
Officer Esanidy Cuevas, Lt. Louis Sojo and Officer Michael Rivera were called to a Whole Foods grocery store on July 4 after a woman was accused of shoplifting some food items in her bag. Rather than charge her for the alleged offense, bystanders said the officers purchased her groceries instead.
The woman reportedly admitted to taking food from the store’s hot bar because she was hungry, CBS New York reported. The officers then took her to the cash register where all three of them paid $10 apiece for her meal.
“When you look at someone’s face and you noticed that they need you and they’re actually hungry, you know, it’s pretty difficult as a human being to walk away from something like that,” Sojo told CBS.{mosads}
“We looked in her bag, and we didn’t see… All we saw was containers of food. We didn’t see anything, anything else,” Cuevas added. “It was just a necessity — food. And I was like, you know… We didn’t even speak about it. Oh, are we gonna pay for it? No, it was just like, alright, let’s go.”
NYPD’s Chief of Department, Terence Monahan praised the “kind-hearted” response from the officers, and thanked a man who photographed the incident and shared it on social media.
“Cops like Lt. Sojo and Officers Cuevas and Rivera of the Strategic Response Group are the kind-hearted cops who quietly do good deeds for New Yorkers in need. My thanks to @pboz for highlighting the often unnoticed,” Monahan tweeted.
“It was a very beautiful, genuine moment,” Paul Bozymowski, who posted the picture on Twitter, told CBS.
Bozymowski said store security had detained the woman for shoplifting before the NYPD officers stepped in.